Free (…as in ‘free beer’) ARM kit

NXP holds a lot of market share for their ARM based solutions as it is. That’s why we were a little surprised when we found a link on their website announcing that they were giving away free LPCXpressodevelopment boards, based on their Cortex-M0 line.

Catches? Unfortunately there are a few to get the board shipped and running. In order to do so, you must…

register with a corporate email address
…the promo is targeted at engineers

use the crippled IDE supplied with the board
…due to hard to find (non-existent?) documentation for the integrated LPC-Link

upload an original video of the physical destruction of a competing board to the NXP website

While killing your Arduino may not sound like the most fun, some qualified readers may be interested in moving up to 32-bits for a price that is hard to beat.

Eh- I was interested until the destroy a competing board. That’s not even a question of cost for me- that’s just needlessly wasteful and I’m not going to play that kind of game for their marketing department.

I only work with STM32 at work, which are Cortex M3. I surely won’t destroy one of those ;) ST was giving out 100% free boards a while ago btw. And those were pretty epic, they even had another STM32 for debugging the main one via USB.

I didn’t destroy anything to get one. I submitted a picture from the web and stated I have never experiment with their devices but would love the opportunity. Got an email a few days ago saying it’s on the way.

Two years ago, I blew up an ATMEGA168 with 6V by not paying attention, and because I am a packrat I saved it. I effectively traded a pre-dead chip for a working board by destroying it in an obvious way.

You have this all wrong. Well not all wrong, but you are putting people off.

I am a hobbyist who happens to have a corporate email, I’d image that would be hard for most hobbyists, but not for University students.

No comment on the IDE, as I have not tried this yet.

This is where you are wrong. You can destroy any chip or board for this. Some people waste expensive ones, I wasted an ATtiny13V (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnVYKLVj_GU). This video has been approved, and my board has been sent. An ATtiny13V is about $3 or so, plus I don’t use AVR chips any more. This one had sat in a box for a year, totally unflashed.

My point is, it’s so easy to just destroy a small chip. That’s $3 for a new AVR, and then $30 for that new board. Good trade in my opinion.

So you need to:
– destroy a board
– bother filming and uploading it
– agree to have your work email address apmmed
And in exchange, you can potentially (at their discretion) qualify for a crippled ARM dev board?
Wow, I’m glad I spent $25 on a TI Stellaris kit.

i have to put my own ARM processor on this? so if i destroy my phone’s ‘motherboard’, preserving the black squares, i can just solder them on and git r done or does it come with a processor or what.. and whatis, how i gets.. a ‘corporate’ email addy?

I just might do this for the lolz. I’ve got several random dev. boards and uC’s laying around which will likely get trashed at some point when I move out. I think I can light one up with my Burnz-O-Matic. I’d bet you can sniff the LPC link using something like a Bus Pirate as well. It’s kinda nice being the IT Admin as work, since I can just filter the crap they send along.

@Cricri
Give them an e-mailadress like Some-name-that-sounds-like-an-engineer@obobbo.com. You don’t have to register that adress, just change the ‘some-name’ part to something. When you think they have send you the mail, go to mailinator.com. On the left (‘Check your e-mail’), enter your qsdf@obobbo.com adress you gave them. If they did send you a mail, you can just never come back. That way = no spam!

Hey, i think you guys didn’t read the site thoroughly. the video is supposed to be of the destruction of a 8/16 microcontroller. it says nothing of a “competing” board, and i dont think it even has to be a dev board. if u check the submitted vids there’s people breaking all kinds of stuff.

Weeeell, it looks like they ask for a pic or video of what you “would do” to your old chip, so maybe actual destruction isn’t necessary.

If I could get away without actual destruction then I’d be interested in trying except a) they can’t have my work e-mail address b) don’t have my own devboard to take pics of – that’s why I’d want one.

The LPCXpresso is a generally nice gadget though. The free (as in beer) dev environment is a derivative of Eclipse although when using it I’ve found it a bit crashy. Never used vanilla Eclipse so I don’t have much of a point of comparison. It seems a shame that the debug protocol is proprietary, however.

You guys are putting words in their mouth, and not thinking creatively enough. The exact requirement is “Show us how you’ve broken the 8/16-bit habit by demonstrating what you would do with your old 8/16-bit board . Upload a picture or video, and we’ll send you a free LPCXpresso! It’s that simple.”
I can think of several possibilities that don’t involve actually breaking your old board, that still meet the spirit of the challenge, and would leave you with working boards…
Although I already picked up one of the lpc13xx series (CM3) LPCExpresso boards free at a ARM devlopment show. The “code red” development environment actually sounds pretty nice, and isn’t *that* crippled. Unlike mBed, the CodeRed stuff has debugging capabilities. (Alas, nearly all the jtag environments seem to have arranged to be moderately proprietary.)

Well, I figured that I could torch a Panasonic MN158418 that I was unlikely to ever use again. At worst, I get a replacement supply of magic smoke to release for fun some time. At best, I get a useful dev board.

Looking it over, I wouldn’t recommend bothering with this. It isn’t really free. Consider all the time you have to spend learning the toolchain which is limited and you will not be able to reuse unless you stay in their little system.

It will cost you a lot less money in the long run just to learn an open/free toolchain and get a simple board.

Unless you absolutely need nothing more than the M0 they are giving away’s features I’d stay far far away.

Because these guys are dicks. And if you support dicks, individually or as a company, you just get more dicks. I don’t care how much free crap I get for it I’m not going to do it and I don’t think anyone else should.

These guys should study Paralax’s marketing. They have sent me samples for absolutely free. No strings, no expectations, no nothing. I didn’t even ask. And now they have a customer for life.

this is nothing more than a fun way to advertise and spread the 32 bit world of MCUs and i bet there making a ton of money off the deal in the longrun … if i like the board they send me than im going to buy more and more

its fun and you get something free from it … just because you dont wanna or you cant does not mean no one else should

I am just saying it depends on how you value your time. I mean sure if you think it will be useful go for it. If you you say your time is worth even 7 dollars an hour than I would argue your would be better off getting a board for even 50 dollars if the skills you learn and tools you learn to use are more flexable.

I would argue for ARM one should focus on: Crossworks, IAR/Keil, or generic GCC. CodeRed and Codesourcery are just GCC with some extras. Crossworks is cheap for non-commercial. IAR/Keil are well supported in industry. Generic GCC is totally free and good enough for a small group working.

No where on the site does it say you need to destroy a competitors chip. It simple says that you should show what you would do with your old 8/16-bit if you were given a free 32-bit. You could take a photo of you putting your old dev board on a shelf and that would be sufficient.